Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Mythic House Rules

I love the Mythic rules for Pathfinder. If you aren't familiar, take a moment to check them out, maybe read about some (spoiler-free) Wrath of the Righteous games, or other Mythic games (if you have a recorded game, let me know!). I've been excited for it since it was in playtest, following it every step of the way. At the time of this post, I'm just starting Wrath of the Righteous and playing my first Mythic character, Sycillya. I have run campaigns with mythic power, though. I powered up the AP Reign of Winter and, through their mythic exploits, have achieved some interesting things. I'm also running Way of the Wicked right now, also with Mythic power.
Despite my love for it, there was some obvious problems in terms of player power vs monster power. Reign of Winter was the first time any of us in my gaming group, Dragon Steaks, used the Mythic rules. I added them in around the end of the first module, and watched the PCs begin shredding things. Shortly after their Mythic power was gained, the Paladin blocked, then countered a white dragon's attack and killed it outright with a critical. After a few more similar encounters, I realized Mythic monsters needed to have real power. My first idea was to tackle the creation of Mythic monsters. All Mythic monsters have maximized HP for their hit dice, plus gains additional HP based on their mythic rank. I also changed most DR from being overcome by epic/mythic sources to just flat DR. For example, instead of gaining DR 10/epic it gains DR 10/-. A huge amount of Mythic powers (and even a few non-mythic, like Smite) overcome any DR type, so it's important that it functions well. This lead to one of my first homebrew mythic monster powers:

Heavily Armored (Ex)

These mythic creatures have an impenetrable armor over most of their body, granting them damage reduction based on their Hit Dice. This damage reduction can be overcome by a called shot, typically to the head or vitals (tricky shot, -5). This DR stacks with any other DR the creature may have.

HD

DR

1-5

5/-

6-10

10/-

11-15

30/-

16-20

50/-

Format: DR 10/Called shot, tricky -5; Location: Defensive Abilities.

This power does a few things. A -5 penalty is fairly significant if it's also a creature with a high AC normally. Touch attacks become normal attacks, and it's a full-round action to make a called shot. With stacking DR, even PCs putting out incredible amounts of damage is limited.
Another issue was with Mythic magic. I'm not going to dive deep into it because magic is powerful enough on it's own and one could go on about Mythic ramifications of magic. So, instead, I'll tackle the obvious ones. The big one was spells bypassing energy immunity. Nothing is more sad than an ancient red dragon getting wasted by a Fireball. Keeping the ability to bypass resistances was important because it's things like that that allow Mythic power to still feel like something extra. But, for someone who really wanted to invest in being the best fire/cold/acid/lightning user, this Mythic power was fun to create

3rd Tier Universal Path Abilities

Elemental Overload (Ex)

Your elemental spells and effects are infused with mythic power. You can spend one mythic point when you use an ability that deals acid, cold, electricity or fire damage. That damage ignores energy resistance. If the opponent is immune, you may spend an additional mythic point, and the effect instead deals half damage against the opponent.

As you can see, when you really need your Scorching Ray to deal it's damage, you can invest power to make it happen. If you want to see my (still work in progress) changes to the Mythic rules, you can follow along in this Google Doc. Comments and suggestions are ALWAYS appreciated and anything you've used in your own games would be great to cover in another post.